Hair Dye
by ilovesunshine93
Summary: It started because he was hurt. But it soon became a ritual for the both of them.


_A/N: I received a prompt from an anon on tumblr, the prompt being "hair dye". I just thought that I'd post it here too. :)_

* * *

Sherlock sits quietly on the edge of Molly's bathtub as she applies the dye on his hair. It is a shade of red, and it clashes horribly with his blue eyes. But since it is the only dye that Mycroft has provided, it will have to do.

He feels her fingers gently parting his hair and in spite of himself, he relaxes against her touch. He would never have gotten someone else to dye his hair for him, if not for the fact that he was sporting two broken ribs and a fractured arm.

He tries not to think about the events that have led him here. It all still seems so surreal – the fall, and needing to take down Moriarty's network. He has to leave for one of Mycroft's safe houses tomorrow, but he allows himself one last day with his old life, one last day with the pathologist whom he now openly considers his friend.

She rinses the dye off his curls and hands him a towel. He accepts it wordlessly and they go into the living room. She gives him some soup. They watch some crap telly together. He finally falls asleep after fighting his drooping eyelids for hours.

* * *

He returns to her house a few months later, completely exhausted. He wants nothing more than to collapse onto Molly's sofa. But he has to leave again tomorrow and his dark roots are starting to show.

Molly gives him a hug, gracing him with a sweet smile. He wants to ask her if she can help him dye his hair – he is just too fatigued to do it himself. But the words refuse to leave his mouth. She sees it though, like how she read him in the lab that day before the fall.

She pulls him into the bathroom and brings out another bottle of hair dye – light brown this time. He lets her comb her fingers through his hair, giving him yet another identity. Her gentle ministrations are relaxing and oddly soothing.

He realises with a start that he likes it.

* * *

This ritual with Molly goes on for the next year, with him returning every few months.

He hates the different colours that his hair has to be. Red, blonde, light brown, black. It's not him. He has never dyed his hair before until after the fall, although people in the past did think that he had.

After all, his body hair is very light compared to the hair on his head. A bit _freakish_, as some boys at boarding school had cruelly told him.

As he travels around the world, he finds himself thinking more about her. He does think about John and Mrs Hudson a lot. But Molly appears in his mind more frequently than he'd anticipated.

He figures that it's probably because she knows he's alive, so it's safe to think about her. Because if he's lucky (and he usually is), she's thinking about him too. It's not one-sided on his part, so it's not that painful.

He thinks about her nose, her smile, her laugh. But he finds himself thinking about her hair most of all. It is exceedingly normal. Average long hair, like many other women. But the shade of brown is pleasing. It turns reddish under darker lights, and chestnut under the lab lights. He likes how it frames her small face, and he loves it most of all when she lets it down.

The next time he returns, he asks her never to dye her hair. She frowns, and he explains that he likes the colour, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. Molly smiles and kisses his cheek.

The memory of her warm lips keeps him going on days when he feels like giving up.

* * *

He finally manages to put a bullet through Moran's head after eighteen long months. He stumbles back into her flat, and she waves a bottle of red hair dye at him, beckoning him into the bathroom. He takes the hair dye away from her and tosses it into the bin. Her eyes widen with realisation.

Sherlock stands there, unsure of what to do now. Suddenly, she flings her arms around his neck and kisses him on his lips. Molly Hooper is kissing him, and the worrying thing is that he doesn't mind. In fact, he is kissing her _back_, with his fingers tangled in her hair. She has kept it the same shade of brown. It's real, natural, not a lie.

She pulls away and he smirks at the effect he has on her – she's breathless. He stops smiling when he realises that he is breathing rather heavily too.

"Molly," he says. "I want to dye my hair back to its original colour."

She nods and pulls him into the bathroom. She takes out a bottle of dye that is the exact same shade of his real hair. Dark, rich, but not black.

He's surprised that she had bought this a long time ago.

He sits on the edge of her bathtub and once again, she dyes his hair. But this time, she's not giving him a new identity. She is pulling him back from the shadows and giving him his old life back. The life he misses so much. How important she actually is to his life, she doesn't yet know.

But as Sherlock looks into Molly's warm eyes, he thinks that maybe someday, she will.

* * *

_Reviews? :)_


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